


behave the embers of your storm

by StorytellerSecrets



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Stay in the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Break-It to Fix-It, Creepy Vibes? I tried anyhow, Dark Obi-Wan Kenobi, Episode: s03e16 Altar of Mortis, Episode: s03e17 Ghosts of Mortis, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Forcible Turning to the Dark Side, Gen, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Order 66 Didn't Happen (Star Wars), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Planet Mortis (Star Wars), Possession, Sith Ahsoka Tano, Sith Anakin Skywalker, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, Well - Freeform, i promise it ends well
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StorytellerSecrets/pseuds/StorytellerSecrets
Summary: Mortis, the legends say, is like a dream. Ahsoka would better call this nightmare. She just hopes it's one they all get to wake up from.Or: it isn't Ahsoka that is possessed by the Son. Anakin's missing, and there's something very wrong with Obi-wan.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 22
Kudos: 164
Collections: New SW Canon Server Works





	1. standing at the precipice

**Author's Note:**

> Based on @newswcanonprompts 's [prompt](https://newswcanonprompts.tumblr.com/post/632890129505189888/sith-obi-wan-on-mortis) (PROMPT CONTAINS SPOILERS AND SOME ELEMENTS WILL BE IGNORED!!)
> 
> Thanks to [hrtiu](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/hrtiu/pseuds/hrtiu) who did an amazing job betaing! This work wouldn't be half of what it is without them! <3

It’s a dark night on Mortis when Anakin reaches the foothills of the tower. The weather has turned quickly from leeching fog to a denser sort of cloud cover. Obi-wan has told him the names of these stormbringers before, black and roiling in the dark blue sky. He can’t remember any of them.

A green light emanates from the tower’s peaks. Anakin can feel the restless energy of the Force from the bottom. What will it feel like up close?

He isn’t sure he wants to know. No, he’s sure he doesn’t. The Force is recoiling from the glowing lights. It’s telling _him_ to recoil. _Run away!_ It shouts. _Run away before it gets you too!_

Anakin can’t run. The Force may urge him to, might ring true in his bones and heavy in his gut, but he can’t leave. At the top of the tower, Obi-wan’s waiting for him. His presence in the Force is blinding against the black of the night. It beams, then flickers.

He must be hurting, that close to the beacons. Anakin will have to hurry.

_Run!_ The Force screams, and Anakin moves to climb.

* * *

The moment before Anakin tips over the tower’s uppermost walls it begins to rain. It is as though a vertical dam has been released. Within seconds the skies burst open and drench him from skin to bone. The layers of his robes absorb the water instantaneously. They weigh down heavy from his shoulders, pulling him towards the ground. The water makes the metal rivets he’s used as handholds slick and Anakin comes dangerously close to letting go.

For all Obi-wan has lectured Anakin on appropriate Jedi attire, the entrenching levels of his clothes that lead to his untimely death are not elements he wants to bring to the argument, theoretical or otherwise.

He can feel Obi-wan, bright and flickering, an uneven flash of energy. They are close, not even hundreds of yards away from each other. He’s almost there. He can’t stop, or fall, or pause. He’s almost there.

He’s almost _there_.

Someone has to save Obi-wan. Ahsoka’s still on the ship, waiting for him to return and ready to fly away at a moment’s notice. Anakin doesn’t trust the beings of this planet to help him, so it has to be him.

He’s sure by now that Obi-wan is in _need_ of saving. He hasn’t moved once from his spot at the top of the tower, and while Anakin can still tell he’s there, his side of the bond is closing. Not gone, but shuttered in a way it’s never been. Even during their worst arguments they’d shared more than this. The only thing coming through is Obi-wan’s presence, and Anakin isn’t sure that’s intentional.

Something’s wrong. The Force is calm. To Anakin Skywalker, Son of the Force, things are calm only when in tragedy. When the Force is most content, there is less possibility, little chance for outcomes to be favorable. The Force is an ever-shifting presence, a shapeless entity of continuous motion. It was not made to be content.

War in the air is a sign of peace. This is not.

Anakin grits his teeth and drags himself over the ledge.

* * *

The first thing Anakin notices is his smile.

Throughout his apprenticeship, his life has been filled with Obi-wan’s smiles. He’s seen warm ones and snarky ones, smug ones and exasperated ones and admonishing ones. Anakin’s seen smiles with teeth and tight-lipped, pointed smiles, smiles with quirking eyebrows and smiles that give Obi-wan crinkles around his eyes.

  
Obi-wan has always been overflowing with light. With smiles, too, he is overabundant.

He smiles even at his enemies, though it’s a different kind of smile. There’s a jut to his jaw that doesn’t exist when it’s for Anakin or Ahsoka or a shiny new trooper. There’s a glint in his eyes that turns just south of cruel that lands somewhere between justified and regretful, as though one more meeting with the light would make their enemies run turncoat.

The fact is Obi-wan smiles. In both of their darkest moments, Obi-wan has smiled. Moments after his Master’s death, he’d looked to Anakin and smiled.

  
Anakin’s seen enough of Obi-wan’s smiles to know that this is not a happy smile, but without their bond he doesn’t know why.

Obi-wan, who had been curled on his knees with his back against the rain, had risen to his feet. He’d turned to where Anakin had been finding his footing and grinned.

The points where his lips meet skin are sharp, and his teeth look needle-tipped. His chin is tilted down and his eyes are hooded. From the sharp lighting of the beacons, his face looks thin and gaunt. His skin is ghostly, a white turned slightly green under the burning emerald lights. The whites of his robes are water-dark and clinging tightly.

“Anakin,” Obi-wan says without looking up. His voice is welcoming, but there’s a warning hand on his saber. Anakin immediately grabs for his.

Anakin had worried, climbing up, that this would be a trap set by the Son. Given Obi-wan’s reaction, he was right.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Anakin asks urgently, stepping towards him. Anakin keeps his eyes wide and alert as he moves, listening to the Force for any signs of movement.

The Force is oddly quiet. It’s viscerally discomfiting, and Anakin takes another step towards his Master.

Obi-wan steps back. His hand visibly tightens on the handle. He breathes in sharply, and the line of his shoulders shakes. It’s clear as the sky isn’t that something is wrong.

Given their track record, it’s equally likely a number of things. Including torture. With Obi-wan, _especially_ torture.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Obi-wan says serenely, and though Anakin might miss some signs he can read between the lines well enough. Nothing’s wrong with _him_.

“Is something wrong with something else?” Anakin asks, adjusting the grip on his saber. He takes another step forward.

Obi-wan’s smile falters. The rain, then drenching, stops. Obi-wan’s Force presence reignites.

It is not the presence of a Jedi Master. It’s barely Obi-wan at all.

The Force explodes. Anakin swings his saber up moments before Obi-wan’s goes for his head.


	2. the brother of eidolon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something deceptively calming about Mortis.
> 
> He does not trust it. “Be wary,” he had warned Anakin and Ahsoka, but it had also been a reminder to himself. There is something in the walls of Mortis, built into the very earth. Obi-wan does not consider it a friendly presence.
> 
>  _Be wary,_ he thinks. _Be wary._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again so much thanks to [hrtiu](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/hrtiu/pseuds/hrtiu) who did a brilliant job betaing! Thank you for all your hard work!
> 
> THERE WAS A TIMESKIP BACKWARDS, WE ARE BACK TO THE FIRST DAY OF MORTIS

_Mortis, Day One_

There is something deceptively calming about Mortis. The rocks are floating, magnetized through superconductivity from the planet’s core or perhaps the encompassing Force Nexus. The low-growing grasses are green. The foliage is large and almost impractical, given the amount of lighting the plants receive.

The higher-altitude growings are red and amass as lichen. Interestingly, they grow directly from the rocks themselves. It indicates they grow from decaying plant matter or rainwater.

Floating rocks are common contrivances when vergences occur. Floating rocks and serene, mythic conditions, like megaflora in clear skies and sharp rocks with no wind or water.

Be that as it may, Obi-wan wouldn’t be surprised if the Nexus had come to be _because_ of the planet’s conditions, rather than the other way around. That is, assuming it _is_ a planet at all. Mortis, it seems, is a place of growing curiosity.

_A breathable climate_ , Ahsoka had said, which meant the plants were exuding oxygen and thus collecting water. Larger size means more water necessary to keep the plants from overheating.

All things considered, Obi-wan is not surprised when it begins to rain. At the beginning of the storm, though, he _is_ surprised to see the clouds.

It isn’t that Obi-wan is particularly knowledgeable about plants, or nature as a whole. Qui-gon had been, however, and iotas of his conglomerate knowledge had been passed down. Perhaps Obi-wan had also been more receptive of knowledge within those fields after his Master’s passing. He was accepting of all knowledge, not just that of botanical nature. It said nothing of his character, and whatever it might’ve implied was conjecture and thus irrelevant.

There was, and he had checked, nothing in the Code that said being attached to _information_ was a failing. He was allowed.

Admittedly, information on water cycles had been intentionally sought out. A younger Anakin had been far more curious about the happenings of other planets, as his knowledge consisted only of Tatooine. Clothing, culture, plants—he asked for everything.

That said, there was nothing quite as alluring to Anakin as the water. It was a precious resource on Tatooine, one that much of Anakin’s culture had been built around. Water was near-sacred, and Anakin had wanted to know everything he could about it.

Obi-wan, in turn, had done his best to always have an answer. Such answers had been appreciated, and if Obi-wan spent hours of his free time scouring for information then that was his business and no one else’s. He’d remembered what it was like, at least a bit, to have too many questions and little in the ways of response.

He, like Anakin, had always been a curious child. Perhaps it was something he could’ve outgrown, but Qui-gon had done his best to encourage that line of thinking. It was something they both did best, though in different areas: thinking, theorizing, questioning.

Water cycles had been studied, was the point, and with them the formation of clouds.

Nimbostratus clouds, Obi-wan knows, cannot produce thunder or lightning. The thunder and lightning currently occurring didn’t quite catch the memo. In rare instances, a thunder or lightning-producing cloud could become embedded in a nimbostratus cloud, but Obi-wan is sure this isn’t the case.

Lightning does not gravitate towards solely-organic entities. Mortis’ environment had not seemed to care. Had Obi-wan or Ahsoka strayed out from the cavern they had hunkered down in, surely the lightning would have charred them as it did the surrounding trees.

It was not safe. They did not go.

Instead Obi-wan sits, facing the mouth of the cave, keeping watch for the passing of the storm. Across the fire that’d taken eternities to kindle, Ahsoka falls into a quiet sleep. The Force of the planet blossoms around her like this is her home.

Obi-wan isn’t sure what it means, but it’s unsettling in the way it’s _not_. It _wants_ him to be comfortable, _wants_ him to sink knee-deep into the Cosmic Force.

He shivers. Despite the bioluminescence of the cave’s crystals, they are somehow colder than the surrounding stone. The fire had been necessary, but had not stopped the chill from creeping in.

It was _cold_ , inasmuch as the cave was loud, echoing reverberations of the pattering rain and booming thunder. It would be headache-inspiring, but Obi-wan can feel the planet’s Force leeching the pain away as quickly as it comes.

He does not trust it. “Be wary,” he had warned Anakin and Ahsoka, but it had also been a reminder to himself. There is something in the walls of Mortis, built into the very earth. Obi-wan does not consider it a friendly presence.

_Be wary,_ he thinks. _Be wary._

* * *

Very carefully, Obi-wan is mediating. There is a danger outside and he knows it, so he’s tethered himself to every vantage point he can and listens. Feels, cautiously, with the hands of the Force.

Ahsoka is across the cavern. Obi-wan can feel her heart beating, tooka-paced even in rest. She’s too tense to be dreaming, battle-ready even in her sleep. It makes something in him ache, that someone so young is so hurt. (More, that it’s Ahsoka.)

Jedi were never meant to be soldiers, but they had been placed in a situation with no right answers. It had not been fight or die, but fight or watch it all burn.

Obi-wan is under no grand illusions. He knows the Jedi are not fighters, not in the ways the Senate claims, just as he knows that he himself is perhaps _too_ knowledgeable in the firsthand effects of war for peacekeeping ideology. Seekers, not saints.

There’s nothing for it, so he doesn’t often dwell on these things. He’s aware of the problem and has not yet found a viable solution. He will. It will come to him eventually, how to escape the war with the fewest deaths (and the ones he loves alive), if only he mediates harder. He needs to think clearer thoughts.

He thinks. Nothing comes.

He thinks. Nothing comes.

He thinks. Something comes.

The Force pulls on a tether, sharply.

Obi-wan is abruptly very aware of his own body, and it’s disorienting to have been yanked back into it without warning. His head throbs, the pain stemming from the back of an eye. His bones groan from the cold. His eyes take effort to open. The Force is no longer here at his aid.

Thunder booms, the sound expanding as it disseminates. As lightning strikes the stone of the floor shakes with a cymballic clatter. Obi-wan can’t hear the rain. His breath, like a nuna in the jaws, is caught.

He is tired, but suddenly very awake.

In front of him is Qui-gon Jinn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!
> 
> (Was this entire chapter an excuse to extensively research the biology and climate of Mortis? perhaps)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Tumblr](https://twinning-the-shit-out-of-you.tumblr.com/)


End file.
